That's a significant taper! Not that I've seen a lot of semi converted MG42's, but mine doesn't have that much length ahead of the spring. I suppose I could reduce the diameter a little, but I'd rather leave it original if possible. And is that end piece of my buffer thru hard or case hard?

I think I'll try to find a way to tighten the fit of the buffer to receiver first.

That looks it is an Austrian part and the Yugo buffer will not fit with the stock. You can get a German buffer from RTG and that would fit. You can get them new and used so it would not break the bank and that way would not need to shim anything to see if that would solve the issue.

The damn stickies! I read through them a few years ago but had forgotten all about them. Thanks for the reminder...very helpful.

According to the sticky, the other two buffers don't have the groove cut near the threads like the German buffer one I posted above does. The German one also has a bit larger diameter nose cap at 0.902", the other two assumed Yugo buffers are at 0.883". I was able to fit one of the two Yugos into the receiver and there was absolutely no bind on the bolt extension.

Tapering the nose cap would definitely rid of the bind. As would a buffer with a smaller nose cap.

I did get the nose pieces swapped and that nearly eliminates the bind. There's still a little when I remove the recoil spring and slide the bolt all the what to the rear, but not enough to cause malfunction.

I had a very successful outing with the MG42 SA and my father the other weekend. We put around 100 rounds in .308 through it with one fail to eject which I think was caused by the rubber piece I added to the front of the trigger housing to protect the brass. This was the first time my Dad had put more than 3 rounds through it in one session and he was loving it!

This would have never happened without the knowledge gained from the group that has contributed on this site. THANK YOU ALL!

Now to replace a few machine screws with rivets and put a finish on her.